Pain was an old friend to Hank Rigby.
Gangrene's icy bite. Shrapnel's white hot kiss.
Or Sarge's boot up his backside for another ill timed sonnet.
But this pain was different.
It wasn't just agony. It was transformation.
The Dragonbone paste burned through his veins like molten copper, searing down to his bones.
He felt as if his skeleton was being reforged in the heart of a dying star, each hammer blow echoing with the roar of the dragon carrying them through the Discordant Sky.
The Ride Through Chaos
Hank clung to a tarnished copper scale the size of a dinner plate, its rough edge biting into his palms.
Below, fractured realities churned:
✨ Deserts blooming crystalline flowers
✨ Oceans boiling under fractured glass skies
✨ Cities built atop slumbering giants
The wind screamed past, smelling of ozone, burnt cinnamon, and something ancient and reptilian.
Beside him, Juni Flux clutched the chanting hakim, his eyes wide with cosmic terror.
The Dragon's Lair
Nidhogg's Scion banked sharply, diving through a tear in reality that bled not light, but sound – a deep thrumming like the heartbeat of a mountain.
They plunged into a realm of colossal, organic architecture.
Mountains made of fused bone.
Rivers of glowing ichor pulsing with starlight.
Towers of twisted chitin, draped in bioluminescent moss weeping tears of green light.
Hank's breath caught. It wasn't beautiful. It was alive. Primal. Terrifying.
This wasn't a dragon's gold hoard.
It was a dragon's workshop – a realm forged from creation and decay itself.
The Bonewright Emerges
The dragon landed on a platform of fused vertebrae overlooking a chasm swirling with multicolored mist.
It lowered its molten gaze to Hank. In those eyes burned ancient intelligence – and curiosity.
From a ribcage archway, a figure emerged.
Not human. Not remotely.
It walked on four jointed limbs like an obsidian praying mantis.
Its torso was plated like dragon scales, and its head was a smooth, featureless oval with two vertical slits glowing soft blue.
"Keeper," the dragon's voice boomed directly into their minds, continents grinding together layered with dying stars.
"The Contaminated Spark Bearer requires stabilization. The Greater seeks its extinction."
The Agony of Stabilization
The Keeper – the Bonewright – extended needle like filaments towards Hank.
They brushed the Dragonbone paste on his leg.
Agony lanced through him, white and pure.
He gritted his teeth as memories surged:
⚡ Sarge yelling, "Rigby, stop composing haikus and SHOOT!"
⚡ Rain and cordite in a foxhole.
⚡ Doc Henderson rambling about pus universes.
⚡ Jenkins sobbing under Glenn Miller's ghostly swing.
⚡ The White Room's sterile terror.
⚡ The ghost Hank whispering: "FIND ME!"
The Bonewright's filaments glowed, siphoning off the worst of the chaotic energy.
Copper lines spread beneath Hank's skin, warm and pulsing. The gangrene receded, replaced by this new, alien thrum.
Then he felt it.
A faint, desperate presence resonating through the Dragonbone's spark.
"Rigby..."
Ghost Hank's voice, weaker than ever.
"Can you feel it? The dissonance?"
The Frozen Song
Hank reached out with his new resonance sense.
He felt the Bonewright's precise alien energy.
The dragon's vast temporal furnace.
The realm's chaotic thrum.
And then… a tiny, discordant silence.
Frozen. Familiar. Like a melody abruptly cut off.
Yoggy.
The sentient yogurt, trapped back in the Indian strand by the Greater's nullity beam.
Ghost Hank's consciousness clung to it like a whisper on ice.
"It's... the anchor," ghost Hank whispered, voice fraying.
"The key... to finding me... the real me... trapped elsewhere. Its song... our song... broke the Greater's focus... just enough..."
The Greater Returns
The oppressive cold returned.
High above, the nebulous eye of the Greater reformed, vast and indifferent.
It focused on the frozen Yoggy resonance, coalescing a beam to erase it – and ghost Hank – forever.
The Dragon's Call
Nidhogg's Scion roared, a summons reverberating through bone towers and ichor rivers.
Winged serpents of lightning.
Armoured beetles with distortion mandibles.
Shadow creatures of starlight.
They rose, a legion of temporal defiance.
The dragon's molten gaze locked onto Hank.
"Spark Bearer," its voice boomed.
"We will shield the anchor... but the cost is your resonance. Your chaos. Your noise."
The Bonewright gestured to the swirling chasm.
"Broadcast," its mind impression pulsed.
"Amplify the Frozen Song's echo. Challenge the silence."
Sergeant Fartquake vs The Cosmos
Hank looked from the Greater's vast eye to Juni's worried gaze to the pulsing copper lines on his skin.
He felt the absurd, glorious weight of it all.
A slow grin spread across his face.
The grin of a man about to recite an obscene haiku under fire.
"Alright, you overgrown paperweight," Hank muttered.
He drew a deep breath, tasting lightning and ancient bone.
Then he bellowed, voice amplified by Dragonbone spark and Bonewright resonance:
"Ode to the Greater's Glorious Boredom!"
"Oh, vast Eye of cosmic dread!
Watching timelines cold and dead!
You crave stillness, neat and tidy,
But Rigby's here to make things squiffy!
You froze our Yoggy, hopeful blob,
Made the very heavens sob!
But hear my verse both loud and crass,
A sonic fart in your looking glass!
BRRROOMPH KABOOM! (The Temporal Tear!)
Your perfect order? Gone, I fear!
Life is messy, loud, and grand,
A boot flung by a furious hand!
A sniper's shot, a lover's kiss,
A chaos you can't dismiss!
Take your nullity, cold and grey,
And shove it up your cosmic array!"
The Broadcast
He didn't just say BRRROOMPH KABOOM.
He projected it – a blast of multicolored distortion erupting from him, infused with Yoggy's faint frozen hum.
The Greater's beam shattered like glass.
Its eye flared in cosmic surprise – and fury.
Below, the dragonkin roared in unison, forming a shield around Yoggy's anchor point, buying time.
The Ghost's Call
"Signal... amplified!" ghost Hank's voice rang stronger.
"Find me, Rigby! Where the silence began!"
Hank sagged, drained but exultant.
Juni stared at him, equal parts awe and exasperation.
He patted his stomach.
"And that, M'lady Flux, is why beans are the greatest weapon in the universe."
The Greater's gaze narrowed.
Sergeant Hank Rigby had just declared war on cosmic order… with a fart joke.
The hunt for the ghost in the machine had begun.
End of Chapter 11
[Next Time:]
"Where The Silence Began" – Into the Greater's domain. No beans. No hope. Just Flux, Rigby, and the echo of a frozen yogurt.